Japanese EUV litho consortium goes global

LONDON – A Japanese joint venture formed to hasten the adoption of Extreme Ultra Violet (EUV) lithography has begun collaborating with foreign chip companies including Intel, Samsung, Hynix and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd.

The group now has external collaboration with chipmakers: Hynix, Intel, Samsung and TSMC, according to its website. It is also working with Osaka and Hyogo universities and Ebara Corp., Lasertec Corp. and Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology.

The joint venture, a follow on from the MIRAI and Selete consortia, is aiming to remove some of the barriers to the use of EUV lithography on 16-nm and 11-nm high performance processes and to promote the introduction of EUV lithography by 2015. It has a working base at clean room in the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology.

Intel is already manufacturing on a 22-nm process and TSMC on 28-nm using double-patterning and immersion of optical lithography. TSMC has installed an early EUV lithography machine supplied by ASML Holding NV. Intel has said that EUVL is already late for use in its own 10-nm production schedule for which the design-rules are already frozen.

Yet another x-ray lithography consortium. I wonder how many of these have been formed, burned millions (or more?), and died over the past 3-4 decades. Do we think renaming x-ray "EUV" will render the overwhelming technical and economic challenges mere minor engineering modifications? We've been expecting x-ray since optical was supposed to run out of gas at 1 micron. If this is incubation, a C-section or abortion is long overdue.